A FILMMAKER'S GLAMOROUS LIFE

Esther B. Robinson learns that many of today's working filmmakers have day jobs too.

Your cell
phone rings. You've been short listed for the Oscars.

So why are you
taking this call in a Home Depot parking lot, surrounded by drywall and new
flooring, on your way to repair a disastrously flooded apartment?

You may be a filmmaker, but you're also a
landlord. This is the day job that makes your film career possible, and now the
flood is your problem.

Welcome to a
filmmaker's glamorous life.

In this case, the
filmmaker is Ross Kauffman, director of the Academy Award-winning Born Into
Brothels. But it could have been any number of famous,
soon-to-be-famous, or totally unknown filmmakers across the country, most of
whom have second jobs.

Landlord, editor,
teacher, d.p., portrait painter, casher-of-trust fund checks — the list
is crazy and unpredictable. The only constant is that most independent
filmmakers have an additional, non-film form of income.

Truthfully if a
trust fund isn't in your past, present or future, you've likely had to find
other ways to support yourself besides film. Recognizing that in the new
economy, even more people will be taking on second jobs, we decided this was
the right time to look at what makes for a good one.

It was clear
during our interviews that there is no "perfect job." Solutions that work for
one person might not translate equally for another. Some wanted short,
lucrative non-film jobs that allowed them to work in bursts. Others liked the
steadiness of long-term, less well-paying jobs that provided after-hours quiet
for creative work. A job that suits a 20-year-old doesn't necessarily work at
35. A gig that's perfect during preproduction doesn't necessarily fly during
shooting. But each of the filmmakers' "best" jobs offered a set of component
parts that could be used to parse out what job is right at any given moment.

After talking with
folks, four basic organizing principles emerged: cash, flexibility,
opportunities and balance. These four things seem to be the driving values
behind what made a job work at any given time. But each of these were valued in
different ways by different people....

Cash

Obviously pay is crucial. But not all pay is alike. High pay
can buy you time off, but it often means high pressure and long hours,
sacrificing the ability to get much creative work done while you're on a job.
Lower pay and/or fewer hours can leave you the energy to work on your film
consistently after hours, but you may not be able to afford to take chunks of
time off to give it 100 percent of your focus.

Surprisingly many
well-known filmmakers found the day-job sweet spot with reality TV: Joshua
Marston, director of another Oscar-nominated movie, Maria
Full of Grace, edited timeless classics like VH1's 100
Most Shocking Moments of Rock and Roll, Paramedics
(The Learning Channel) and MTV's Mission Makeover. "Frankly,"
says Marston, "while I waited (and waited) for the financing for Maria,
the pay and flexibility kept me afloat."

Sam Green,
director of Academy Award-nominated The Weather Underground,
worked for cooking shows until he landed a job at the History Channel editing America's
Psychic Past. "It wasn't exactly a masterwork," states Green, "but
it was actually a really good gig — I would crunch on a project for six
or eight weeks and make what was for me a lot of money. Then I could not work
for two or three months and edit my own stuff."

However these
tours of duty do have their downside for some people. Filmmaker David Lowery (St. Nick)
cautions, "Production is hard, no matter what the job is, and when you waste
your energy and talent on productions that you don't care about, your
creativity dies a bit. All those little deaths add up..." Natalia Almada, winner
of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directors Award concludes, "I really love
editing as I think it makes me a better filmmaker and it is creative. But it can
be all consuming for up to as much as six months so it doesn't always leave me
any energy or time for my films. And sometimes, depending on where I am with my
own film, the time is more important than the money."

Flexibility

Every job
demands some of your time. But the kind of demands varied.
Award-winning filmmaker Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs, Alexander the Last) taught himself
Web design, and for the first two years out of college worked for a Web
company in Chicago. "The company was really cool about giving me days off or
letting me work half-days when I needed to shoot," he says. "My boss knew I
wanted to be a filmmaker and was very supportive. He even has a cameo in my
second film."

Tze Chun (Children
of Invention) wanted to make his own schedule. "I opted to do a
bunch of short-term work rather than something that would have me in an office
from 9-5," he states. "I sold abstract paintings and did portrait painting on
commission. What's nice about painting is that it uses a totally different part
of your brain, and you never really have to worry about getting financing or
raising co-production money, etc. You just need a paintbrush and a canvas."

For Jake Mahaffy (Wellness, War) being an
Associate Professor of Art & Film at Wheaton College has meant a solid job
that lets him plan his year: "Stability is the main thing. Time is NOT money.
Time is worth more than anything money can give.... Knowing I've got a job, a
definite schedule, low stress, no travel, no sudden deadlines with overtime or
other random impositions is very important for me."

Currently preparing her first feature, Liza
Johnson, also a professor at an undergraduate university (Williams College),
goes one step further. "Since I don't have to take risks about earning money, I
feel like I can take more creative risks," she says. But, she cautions, "Being
a professor can really become your whole identity... Everybody in my workplace
takes our work home with us, and sometimes the intensity of our internal faculty
conversations can really take up a lot of time. I had to learn to set a balance
so that those parts of academic life don't take time away from making my film."

Opportunities

For some
people, especially those at the beginning of their
careers, it can be worth taking a job that provides opportunities for
networking or to learn certain skills. Swanberg took a job at the Chicago
International Film Festival. "It wasn't creative work," he says, "but I learned
so much about the way film festivals run. I also learned the names of all the
distribution and sales companies and who worked for them." Through his work at
CIFF he also got repeated chances to meet Ryan Werner (now an executive at IFC
films). "I don't think it's a coincidence that IFC Films took a chance on my
third feature, Hannah Takes the
Stairs, and has distributed my two subsequent films."

Access to technology or equipment can also make a
job worthwhile. After college, writer-director Tom Quinn (The New Year Parade) spent seven years working at the local high
school in Bucks County, Pa., as a technology associate while he made his first
two films. This job offered him a chance, fittingly, to get caught up on new
technology. "Updating the [school's] TV studio in '99 forced me to catch up on
the 'new' wave of digital filmmaking, introducing me to area filmmakers like
Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast)," he says.
Contacts from the school also provided surprising benefits. "Many former
students have become incredible crew members, and my producer on The New Year Parade, Steve Beal, was a biology teacher." They also
helped build audience: "When premiering my first project the vice principal
announced the screening over the school PA, and we ended up selling out several
shows thanks to student and staff support."

Balance

A good
second job will give you something besides cash, skills or
opportunities. It will help balance your life. Maybe it provides health
insurance or a gym membership. Maybe it gives you a good work environment and
non-film friends. Maybe, like Tze Chun's current TV-writing gig, it provides a
break from the rigors of filmmaking. "In indie film, you're driving the boat.
If something goes wrong, you're to blame, and so you're responsible for every
little thing in the production," he says. "With TV writing, you''re a small
part of something big. You're not responsible for everything. You're completely
removed from the physically painful parts of the process, like being in the sun
or the cold...."

Maybe your second
job gives you material for your films, or the opportunity to clear your head by
being around non-film people. While he was making his award-winning film Medicine
for Melancholy, Barry Jenkins worked as the shipment supervisor at
the largest Banana Republic in the world.
"...getting the muscles going, having a dialogue with real people and not
about 'projects' was a great way to start the day," he says. "In fact, several
people I worked with there are in the film, (and) another shot the still that
became the poster."

Work can even be enjoyable and meaningful. "I
really like teaching people about art, film and ideas. It feels like a
privilege," says Johnson.

Of course, all the
filmmakers we spoke to had a healthy suspicion of too much comfort from their
day job. "I literally have a plot in the faculty cemetery that came with my
tenure," Johnson adds. Fair warning.

So maybe you're
not ready for your own cemetery plot. Maybe each of the jobs mentioned here
sound terrible or maybe they

sound great, but the point is any job you take will
be a mixed bag.As Mahaffy says,
"It's important to decide what your priorities are in having a job, if it's
status or prestige by affiliation, a bohemian lifestyle, a huge paycheck,
networking your way into a higher position, geographic location... It all comes
down to a balance and personality, deciding for yourself how you can manage the
practical, creative schedule allowed by any given job."

Your task is to
find the right mix of cash, opportunities, skills and balance that makes your
film life possible. Hopefully spending time in advance thinking through the
pros and the cons will help you find a job that works. It may even make you
grateful for the second job you currently have. And while the goal is for your
second job to support your filmmaking, it's also important to remember that the
overall goal is living a good life — one filled with meaning and purpose
and film. Plus keep in mind that everyone (no matter how successful) always
thinks the other guy has figured it out, but honestly most people make it work
by the skin of their teeth.

The only truism?

You may see
the filmmakers you admire walking the red carpet at the Oscars, but
you're just as likely to see them in their glamorous finest, gathering flood
repair drywall in aisle 12 at Home Depot.